Frank O'Connor
| birth_place = Cork, Ireland | death_date = March | death_place = Dublin, Ireland | occupation = Short story writer | nationality = Irish | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | influences = Anton Chekhov | influenced = Colm Toibin, Julian Barnes | signature = | website = }} Frank O’Connor (born Michael Francis O'Connor O'Donovan) (17 September 1903 - 10 March 1966) was an Irish writer, author of over 150 works. Best known for his short stories and memoirs, he was also a translator of traditional Irish poetry. Life Youth O'Connor was raised in Cork, the only child of Minnie (O'Connor) and Michael O'Donovan, he attended school in the famous North Monastery. O'Connor's early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. O'Connor's childhood was shaped in part by his mother, who supplied much of the family's income because his father was unable to keep steady employment due to his drunkenness. Irish nationalism In 1918 O'Connor joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and served in combat during the Irish War of Independence. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, working in a small propaganda unit in Cork City. He was one of 12,000 nti-Treaty combatants who were interned by the government of the new Irish Free State, O'Connor's imprisonment being in Gormanston, co. Meath]] between 1922 and 1923. Literary career Following his release, O'Connor took various positions including that of teacher of Irish, theatre director, and librarian. In 1935, O'Connor became a member of the Board of Directors of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, founded by William Butler Yeats and other members of the Irish National Theatre Society.My Father's Son, by Frank O'Connor, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1968, 153. In 1937, he became managing director of the Abbey. His play The Invincibles was staged at the Abbey 18 October 1938. Following Yeats's death in 1939, O'Connor's long-standing conflict with other board members came to a head and he left the Abbey later that year.My Father's Son, 199. On 11 February 1939 O'Connor married Evelyn Bowen; they had 2 sons, Myles (born July 1939) and Oliver (born June 1945), and a daughter, Liadain (born November 1940). They were divorced in 1953. In 1950, he accepted invitations to teach in the United States, where many of his short stories had been published in The New Yorker and won great acclaim.My Father's Son, note on the author, unnumbered On 5 December 1953 he married Harriet Rich; they had one daughter, Hallie-Og (born June 1958).Frank O'Connor, Ricorso. Web, Mar. 21, 2017. Death Frank O'Connor had a stroke while teaching at Stanford University in 1961, and later died from a heart attack in Dublin on 10 March 1966. He was buried in Deans Grange Cemetery on 12 March 1966.Frank O'Connor Writing O'Connor was perhaps best known for his varied and comprehensive short stories but also for his work as a literary critic, essayist, travel writer, translator and biographer.Frank O'Connor Page He was also a novelist, poet and dramatist.Frank O'Connor's Collected Stories, Introduction, Knopf, N.Y., 1981. p. xii From the 1930s to the 1960s he was a prolific writer of short stories, poems, plays, and novellas. His work as an Irish teacher complemented his plethora of translations into English of Irish poetry, including his initially banned translation of Brian Merriman'sCúirt an Mheán Oíche ("The Midnight Court"). Many of O'Connor's writings were based on his own life experiences — notably his well-known The Man of the House in which he reveals childhood details concerning his early life in co. Cork. The Sullivan family in this short story, like his own boyhood family, is lacking a proper father figure. Also, evocative descriptions of the Irish countryside are featured in this bitter-sweet tale. In other stories, his character Larry Delaney, in particular, is reminiscent of events in O'Connor's own life. O'Connor's experiences in the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Collected Stories, published in 1981. O'Connor's early years are recounted in An Only Child, a memoir published in 1961 which has the immediacy of a precocious diary. O'Connor continued his autobiography through his time with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which ended in 1939, in his book, My Father's Son, which was published posthumously in 1968. Recognition His poetry was included in the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. U.S. President John F. Kennedy remarked on An Only Child at the conclusion of his speech at the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center in San Antonio on November 21, 1963: :Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall &ndas; and then they had no choice but to follow them. This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it.The Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass., Speech of Nov. 21, 1963, Dedication of Aerospace Medical Health Center, San Antonio, Tex. Frank O'Connor Festival and Prize Since 2000, The Munster Literature Centre in O'Connor's hometown of Cork has run a festival dedicated to the short story form in O'Connor's name. The longest established annual festival dedicated to the short story form in an English-speaking country, it regularly hosts readings, workshops and masterclasses for contemporary practitioners of the form, as well as celebrating the work of O'Connor and other local short fiction writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Seán Ó Faoláin and William Trevor.http://www.munsterlit.ie/FOC%20FESTIVAL.html The festival has hosted readings by : Richard Ford, Julia O'Faolain, James Lasdun, Alasdair Gray, Dan Rhodes, Eugene McCabe, Bernard MacLaverty, Desmond Hogan, James Plunkett, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Rebecca Miller, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Etgar Keret, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Cónal Creedon, Samrat Upadhyay, Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Rachel Sherman, David Marcus, Panos Karnezis, Nisha da Cunha, William Wall, Bret Anthony Johnston, David Means, Claire Keegan, Miranda July, Rick Moody, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Julie Orringer, ZZ Packer, Simon Van Booy, Wells Tower, Charlotte Grimshaw and Kevin Barry among others. It also has a tradition of encouraging younger writers at the start of their career, Jon Boilard for example. The Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, is awarded to the best short fiction collection published in English anywhere in the world in the year preceding the festival. The prize is also open to translated works and in the event of a translation winning the prize is divided equally between author and translator. The award is described as "the richest prize for the short story form" and at €35,000 in 2010 is one of the most valuable literary prizes for any category of literature. In popular culture Neil Jordan's award winning film The Crying Game was inspired in part by O'Connor's short story, "Guests of the Nation". The story is set during the Irish War of Independence and chronicles the doomed friendship between the members of an I.R.A. unit and the 2 British Army hostages whom they are guarding. Publications Poetry *''Three Old Brothers, and other poems''. London: Nelson, 1936. Novels *''The Saint and Mary Kate''. London & New York: Macmillan, 1932. *''Dutch Interior''. London: Macmillan, 1940; New York: Knopf, 1940> Short fiction *''Guests of the Nation''. London & New York: Macmillan, 1931. *''Bones of Contention''. New York: Macmillan, 1936. London: Macmillan, 1938. *''Crab Apple Jelly''. London: Macmillan, 1944; New York: Knopf, 1944. *''The Common Chord''. London: Macmillan, 1947; New York: Knopf, 1948. *''Traveller's Samples''. London: Macmillan, 1951; New York: Knopf, 1951. *''Stories''. New York: Knopf, 1952; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953. *''More Stories by Frank O'Connor''. New York: Knopf, 1954. *''Domestic Relations''. New York: Knopf, 1957; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957. *''My Oedipus Complex, and other stories'' (edited by Julian Barnes). London: Penguin, 1963. *''Collection Two''. London: Macmillan, 1964. *''Collection Three''. London: Macmillan, 1969. *''A Set of Variations''. New York: Knopf, 1969. *''The Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland''. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1981. *''Collected Stories'' (edited by Richard Ellmann). (2 volumes), London: Pan, 1981. *''The Collar: Stories of Irish priests''. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1993. *''A Frank O'Connor Reader'' (edited by Michael Steinman). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994. *''Larry Delaney, Lonesome Genius''. Cork: Killeen Books, 1996. Non-fiction *''The Big Fellow: Michael Collins and the Irish revolution''. London: Nelson, 1937 **revised, Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds / London: Burns & Oates, 1965. *''An Only Child''. New York: Knopf, 1961; London: Macmillan, 1961; Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. *''My Father's Son''. London: Macmillan, 1968; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1968); Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Travel writing *''Irish Miles''. London: Macmillan, 1947; London: Hogarth Press, 1988. *''A Picture Book'' (illustrated by Elisabeth Rivers). Dublin: Cuala Press, 1943. *''Leinster, Munster and Connaught''. London: Robert Hale, 1950. Criticism *''Towards an Appreciation of Literature''. Dublin: Metropolitan, 1945. *''Shakespeare: The road to Stratford''. London: Methuen, 1948 **revised & expanded, Shakespeare's Progress. Cleveland, OH: World, 1960; London: Collier, 196l. *''The Mirror in the Roadway: A study of the modern novel''. Mew York: Knopf, 1956; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957. *''The Lonely Voice: A study of the short story''. Cleveland, OH: World, 1962; Toronton: Nelson, Foster, & Scott, 1963; Lonon: Macmillan, 1963. *''The Backward Look: A survey of Irish literature''. London & Toronto: Macmillan, 1967 **published in U.S. as A Short History of Irish Literature: A backward look. New York: Putnam, 1967. *'' The Art of the Theatre''. London & ublin: Fridberg, 1947. Translated *''The Wild Bird’s Nest''. Dublin: Cuala Press, 1932 *''Lords and Commons''. Dublin: Cuala Press, 1938 *''The Fountain of Magic''. London: Macmillan, London 1939. *''Lament for Art O’Leary'' (illustrated by Jack B. Yeats). Dublin: Cuala Press, 1940 *Brian Merriman, The Midnight Court. London & Dublin: Fridberg, 1945; Dublin: O’Brien Press, 1989 *''Kings, Lords and Commons''. New York: Knopf, 1959; London: Macmillan, 196l; *''The Little Monasteries''. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1963. *''A Golden Treasure of Irish Poetry, AD 600-1200'' (edited & translated). London, Melbourne, & Toronto: Macmillan, 1967; Kerry, Ireland: Brandon, 1990. Juvenile *''First Confession. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1990. Collected editions *''The Best of Frank O'Connor (edited by Julian Barnes). New York: Everyman's Library, 2013. Edited *''Modern Irish Short Stories''. London: Oxford University Press, 1957. *''The Book of Ireland''. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1991. Letters *''The Happiness of Getting it Down Right: Letters of Frank O'Connor and William Maxwell, 1945-1966''. New York: Knopf, 1996. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Frank O'Connor, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 21, 2017. Audio / video *''Frank O'Connor: Reading two complete stories: The drunkard / My Oedipus complex'' (LP). New York: Caedmon, 1955. See also * Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award * List of Irish poets References *''Irish Writers on Writing'' featuring Frank O'Connor. (edited by Eavan Boland). Trinity University Press, 2007. Notes External links ;Poems *"I Shall Not Die" ;Prose *"First Confession" ;About *Frank O'Connor in the Encyclopædia Britannica *Frank O'Connor at Literature Ireland * Biography *Frank O'Connor at Ricorso * Frank O'Connor at the Internet Movie Database * *Frank O'Connor Research Website at University College Cork ;Etc. * THE CORK CITY - FRANK O'CONNOR SHORT STORY AWARD Non-profit arts organisation The Munster Literature Centre - Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland. * Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Category:Irish writers Category:Abbey Theatre Category:People from Cork (city) Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Irish memoirists Category:People of the Irish Civil War Category:Irish short story writers Category:Irish Republican Army members (1917–1922) Category:Irish Republican Army members (1922–1969) Category:People from County Cork Category:1903 births Category:1966 deaths Category:Burials at Deans Grange Cemetery Category:Irish republicans interned without trial Category:Irish soldiers Category:Translators from Irish